In The Gray by B. B. Reid | Plot Twist of the Century (Spoilers)

LISTEN… what in the entire f*ck!

So from jump had no clue wth was going on and by the time I was about 300 pages in I wanted to cuss everybody out. Atlas Beck is a 19 year old who had just lost her father and is estranged from her mother. She is also navigating betrayal from her boyfriend and best friend. She mysteriously receives a letter and photo in the mail telling her she had been lied to and needed to travel to Idlewood because the people in the photo held the answers she needed. The photo was of 5 teens (4 boys and a girl) in front of a run down factory taken 20 years ago. Atlas doesn’t know or recognize anyone in the photo but they are called the Pride of Kings.

Again, she is 19 but girl, why TF would you up and leave everything you know to go to a town where you know NO ONE in search of people you don’t know. So Atlas does her research and is able to figure out who each of the 4 boys, now grown men, were in the photo. The old factory is now a popular mechanic shop owned and operated by the foursome (Rowdy, Roc, Joren & Golden) who happen to run the city pretty much. Atlas tries to come up with a plan to get close to them so she can dig for whatever answers they supposedly have. She finally decides to get a job application for the receptionist position at the shop. Once she has it, she continues to spy on the men but gets caught. Golden (who doesn’t speak) and Roc corner her in a restaurant and demand she tell them why she’s watching their shop. Neither of them trust her even after she shows them the job application, but they interview her on the spot and give her the job.

Shit gets crazy from this point forward lol. Introduce Rowdy Wray aka the lion of Idlewild. Atlas and Rowdy have a run in before she is even introduced as his receptionist. She is legit fearless, no nonsense and tells it like it is. Despite how young he says she looks, Rowdy decided immediately that he wanted to fuck her and wouldn’t take no for an answer. While she can’t deny her attraction to him, she wasn’t goin’ out like that, so she told him she was 14 years old. Only to be caught in a lie when Roc finally shows up and tells Rowdy (her new boss) she’s the new receptionist and she has to pull out her ID.

Rowdy initially refused to allow her to work at the shop but relented, letting her know that he wasn’t responsible for what would happen to her as a result i.e. he was going to have his way with her. From that point on, Atlas avoids Rowdy like the plague and upon meeting Joren, she decides he is also persona non grata and avoids him as well. As time progresses, she becomes friendly with many of the employees and softens her stance on Rowdy. IDK why because that man is UNHINGED and so possessive! I’m talkin even Fire Carlson has nothing on this level of unhinged.

Rowdy continues to relentlessly pursue Atlas and while they don’t immediately have sex; they do have some extremely spicy xrated interactions. Baby this book is raunchy and I love it here! Eventually Rowdy cuts off all other women and starts dating Atlas. Rowdy wants to make sure she’s not an OPP so he goes to her hometown, meets her mother, hears about her childhood, learns that Atlas was adopted, learns her mother is sick with sickle cell and her father died from the disease.

Rowdy and Atlas are toxic AF!!! Constantly bickering, fighting, him being violent (not hitting but threatening), her flying off the handle with physical violence, both possessive and quick tempered etc. But chile… they’re on some brat/tamer vibe and decided that they love each other and want to be together no matter what. Rowdy has never been in a relationship nor cared about any woman he had sex with, so he is in uncharted territory on top of being twice her age. He even tricked her into moving into his home so he could be around her 24/7.

Enter Jada; Joren’s wife of 17 years. Atlas figures out she is the girl in the picture she received. Whatever vibe Atlas feels upon meeting her, she decides she doesn’t like her ass about as quick as she did with Joren. She eventually learns why upon reading some letters Rowdy had locked in a tackle box. Atlas pieces together the fact that Rowdy and Jada messed around while at some point during her relationship Joren. She chalked it up to him being a shady, triflin’ ass best friend and Jada still having feelings for him.

Welp, that’s when shit hits the fan. After coming home well after 3AM one morning, Rowdy suddenly starts distancing himself from Atlas and refusing to touch her. It gets to the point where she said fuck this I’m out while continuing to work at the shop and ignoring his existance.

*Spoiler Alert* Jada told Rowdy she had a child & gave her up for adoption when they were 15. She gave him a picture of said child who has the same vitiligo pattern on her face as Atlas and literally told him he had to stop sleeping with her because she was his daughter.

Baby… hear me when I say NOTHING prepared me for this plot twist. NOT A DAMN THING! Then for him to STILL want Atlas, crave her, and have to force himself to not touch her was insane! She wasn’t no better tho lol. The way my mouth dropped when I learned what “in the gray” meant! Chile throw the whole thing away!

This entire book gave me anxiety until the very end. Finding out there was actually a sixth person who is the key to these mysterious clues Atlas keeps getting was yet another thing I did not see coming.

I listened to the audio book (Myles Washington sounds weird in this one) and then turned around and read it to make sure I didn’t somehow miss something because what in the entire fuck. Ya girl was pleased with the way the story ended even though there was entirely too much that happened leading up to that point.

This one was GOOD.

TW: violence, toxic dynamics, grooming themes, daddy issues

Rating: Rowdy is a whole menace, and I was fighting for my life, but I couldn’t stop reading